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Australian survivalist horror Killing Ground follows a smitten young couple on a camping trip to a remote woodland spot by a river. It’s picture postcard perfect apart from the 4x4, family tent, chairs and long burnt out fire that greets them. But where are the occupants? The answer to that question and the brutality that befell them is given to the audience before our heroes Sam and Ian find out for themselves. To be frank, the dread Damien Power builds through this non-linear approach is a masterclass in screenwriting as he weaves together the present day mystery with its murderous recent past while simultaneously giving you context of the wider community and culture of this unwelcoming nowhere place. He channels the urbanoia (Glover, 1993) spirit of Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) or John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972), but without the cartoon hick element. The evil of Power’s antagonists German (Aaron Petersen) and Chook (Aaron Glenane) is invisible to the naked eye. When they’re not out killing there’s a great deal of empathy between them. Although, Petersen’s character is the alpha leading Glenane’s complicit beta male astray in exchange for companionship a la Henry and Otis in Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer (1986).

The film cleverly chooses to shy away from the graphic and obvious exploitative imagery. Instead Power wants the audience to think about what they’re watching. He holds the camera on character’s reactions or shoots a scene from a distance that respects the victims and exposes the violators for who, and what they are. Your mind has already been primed for German and Chook’s savagery, you can fill in the blanks with much worse images from your imagination that Power ever could throw at you on screen for cheap thrills. That’s not to say he avoids controversy of plays it safe. Far from it, there are times during Killing Ground that the violent choices of Chook will make you involuntarily gasp. And the decisions Ian takes once separated from Sam elevate the Force Majeure (2014) dilemma to another level and confront you with the moral question: what is a man meant to do in these situations?

Killing Ground is brilliant reminder that even in this internet era of connectivity physical remoteness from one another is still an alluring reason to live beyond the reaches of the social law urban people take for granted.

Set in Rome The End? focuses on Claudio Verona (Alessandro Roja). He’s the cold as ice CEO of a blue chip company who is running late for an important business meeting. He’s so pre-occupied with this appointment in his chauffeur driven car that he isn’t hearing the news on the radio that’s warning of civil unrest across the city. His initial frustrations about any delay come out as petulance to the driver, lift engineer and his put upon secretary. When his wife calls he’s impatient and disinterested. This man is an A1 prick who has shimmyed up the greasy corporate pole and believes his sacrifices now entitle him to get his own way. Demonstrated brilliantly when he forces himself onto his colleague and ex-mistress Marta (Euridice Axen). She’s moved on, but he doesn’t care in this lustfilled moment until she grabs him by the balls and lectures him on the error of his ways. Thematically, it’s a good indicator that times are about to change for Claudio as once she exits the elevator he’s counting the minutes to his big meet when it stops – stuck between two floors. Contact with the outside world is reduced to his phone and the walkie talkie conversations his has with the lift engineer.

Tired of waiting for others to resolve his situation he jimmies the door open enough to see out, but not enough for him to squeeze through. Obtusely, he discovers this is a blessing in disguise during his first horrific zombie attack. If he can’t fit through, neither can they. It transpires that his misfortune has landed him in one the safest place in the city.

Roja gives a tireless and ranging performance from such a confined space. All eyes are on him for this movie as colleague after colleague almost help him to escape. Only for the zombies – possessed people as they are referred to on the news – to thwart them.

The first half of the film bustles with the claustrophobia of the contained setting and energy of our active hero. However, over reliance on off screen deaths at the end of walkie talkies or phones mean in the second half of the film they begin to lose their impact and steal The End? of its tension. Ironically, given the English language title, it also suffers from an inability to actually end.

The strength of The End? is that the horror of Claudio’s situation helps to teach him that his autocratic tough exterior is a fiction he projects to scare people into doing what he wants and needs. As the layers of his career-fuelled delusion are peeled away Claudio finds his will to survive and the humble benefits of working with others to achieve that goal.

DOUBLE DATE

Director: Benjamin Barfoot

Writer: Danny Morgan

Jim, played by the writer of this horror/comedy Danny Morgan, is a 29 year old virgin about to turn 30. His pushy friend Alex (Michael Socha) is determined to get him to lose his cherry before the big three-O. When two sirens, Kitty and Lulu, walk into their bar and pay particularly close attention to Jim they can’t believe their luck. Men being men their blind to any warning sign that these femme fatales are on a very different mission. They need a virgin male to complete a blood sacrifice ritual that Kitty, more than Lulu, believe will re-animate their dead father. The four embark on a night on tiles with competing agendas that largely swing in siblings favour, but to everyone’s surprise, not least Jim, Lulu begins to lose sight of the overall mission and develops feelings for our hapless romeo.

Double Date is beautifully written. Morgan’s ear for a gag and eye for the absurd is a constant throughout the film. The sing-song at his parents house encapsulates this perfectly. Everyone is wearing t-shirts with Jim’s face printed on it while Jim is coming up on the MDMA he doesn’t know he’s taken.

Alex as Jim’s alpha male foil is handled well too. This character could so easily have been a nasty bullying presence in Jim’s life, but Morgan has given Socha a personality to occupy that is at first cocky, but also full of warmth and respect for his unlucky in love friend. The sister’s relationship mirrors the boys: Kelly Wenham (Kitty) leads Georgia Groome (Lulu). Naturally, Jim is drawn to Lulu and vice versa. This leaves Kitty and Alex fighting it out for top dog – quite literally to the death towards the end of the film. Wenham is kickass as a psychotic killer vamp. Her kills are vicious and visceral. There is no quarter given to the very physical challenges her role and with the benefits of pre-film MMA training, this Cheshire born actor appears to be an exciting prospect for bigger action movie roles in the future.

There’s a great score by Swedish afro-funk, kraut rockers GOAT and the band even make a brief appearance during one of the club scenes.

Double Date balances the dual demands of a horror/comedy in the sense that it spills plenty of blood and people must fight for their lives, but where it succeeds most is with Morgan’s sense of humour.

DOUBLE DATE is in Cinemas Friday 13th October 2017

IMITATION GIRL

Writer/Director: Natasha Kermani

When a freak, alien object falls out of the desert sky, a doppelganger of a famous glamour model, Julianne Fox, materialises in a remote corner of South West America. She has no awareness of who she is or where she is. Each discovery she makes is a lesson to learn as she acclimatizes to her new body and surroundings. A middle-eastern hotel worker, Saghi, and his sister, Khahar, take in what they believe to be a vulnerable adult. Sign language and morsels of food are their own only means of communications but imitation girl is very receptive to their human interactions and soon learns to speak both English and Farsi. Meanwhile, the real Julianne is muddling through life. Despite her fame and celebrity she is desperately dissatisfied and fruitlessly looks for an escape without ever deviating from the path she’s already on.

Natasha Kermani’s film is a gentle tale about identity and what defines us. The imitation is a blank canvas able to create who she is without any of the normal societal pressures. Whereas Julianne is far from who she wants to be, but is trapped, mentally speaking, by past life choices and perceived lack of options to find new ones. The mystery and dread of the moment when the two women cross paths is palpable but seems forever unlikely. As a result you get to watch what feels like two movies simultaneously until the imitation girl is triggered to seek out Julianne and some, but not all is revealed about the why she came.

Lauren Ashley Carter (Jugface, The Woman) delivers the amazing dual role performance of Julianne and imitation. They genuinely feel like two characters. Add in the subtle use of hair and make up to differentiate them and she easily convinces you they’re different people from the get go.

One of the joys of Frightfest over recent years has been finding the hidden gems tucked away from the main screen events. These unusual films tend stray from the catholic genre tastes of the mainstream horror crowd. In 2015 They Look Like People used the deceit of a potential alien invasion as a misdirect to consider mental health issues. In 2016 Man Underground invited us to take a reclusive conspiracy theorist into our hearts. In the subjective world of films I catch at Frightfest, it looks like 2017’s gem is Imitation Girl.

MAYHEM

Director: Joe Lynch

Writers: Matias Caruso

Ten years since his feature length directorial debut Wrong Turn 2: Dead End graced Frightfest, Joe Lynch is back with his fourth movie. Whereas a decade ago he was cramming splatter punk horror influences into the camera, now he’s exploring his own experiences and observations of working in corporate culture USA. Derek Cho (The Walking Dead’s Steven Yeun) is a trained attorney working in a big law office. He is framed by colleagues and unjustly fired. Before he is escorted out the building, the place is quarantined after becoming infected with the ID7 virus – wipes away all inhibitions and makes the most conservative and compliant person act on their wildest impulses. In a world self-regulated by passive aggression and conformity, chaos ensues as the fabric of off the peg suit and tie civility is torn asunder. Ironically, there is no legal redress for anyone who kills a colleague thanks to a landmark legal case won by our erstwhile hero Derek. Tossed into the basement he finds an unlikely ally in Melanie (Samara Weaving) – earlier that day he had insisted there was nothing he could do to stop the foreclosure on her home. Together they’re going to – literally – fight their way to the top to get his job back and write off her mortgage.

Booze and recreational drugs have long been the perfect lubricant to over grease the career pole and send people crashing back down to the post room or out the door. It’s fitting that Mayhem’s mysterious virus combines their best qualities and adds wanton murder to ensure there’s a blood soaked, action adventure. Yeun is the perfect everyman-cum-reluctant hero. He rises to each and every one of the improbable life threatening challenges a conniving workforce buoyed on ID7 presents him. Nail guns and grinders are now the tools of his trade in this corporate dystopia.

East London’s Caroline Chikezie as ‘The Siren’ steals many a scene as the two-faced office bitch and Shallow Grave’s Kerry Fox will surprise a few as she sticks her kitten heels in where bovver boots usually go.

Thematically, Mayhem is fully aware of the contempt it feels for this way of life. As a result, Lynch doesn’t have to lecture us. Instead, he gets to have a ball lampooning the hollowness of oft used, deflecting phrases like: “Lets discuss…” and kill lots of suits in the process. It’s as if Colin Higgins’ 9 to 5 jumped Die Hard’s shark and landed in The Raid’s bloodiest moments with a shit-eating grin on its face.

Korean action film The Villainess brings a touch of cinema class to Frightfest. Back in May 2017 it was in competition at Cannes Film Festival and reports of the screening say it was met by a four minute standing ovation from an audience that included Oldboy director Park Chan Kook.

The improbable plot is relatively simple, but the storytelling is not. A ruthless female assassin named Sook Hwe (Kim Ok Bin) who, as a child, was trained to kill in China. For reasons explored in the movie, she is adopted/employed as a sleeper agent for South Korea’s Intelligence Agency. They promise her freedom if she gives them a decade’s service. However, two men from her past make an unexpected re-appearance and shine a light on her darkest, suppressed secrets.

The Villainess is nothing short of stunning. Think La Femme Nikita meets Kill Bill with the best bits from Raid II. The superb action is forever high-octane and set pieces are so wonderfully brutal and choreographed its close to being a violent ballet. Lead actress, Ok Bin is sensational as the kickass woman always ready to deploy her guns, knives, fists and/or feet for the agency and in her subsequent hunt for truth and justice. The fights are mesmerizing. There are POV sequences that rival and better Hardcore Henry. The opening seven minutes alone takes you into the heart of the battle and then through the use of a wall mirror spits you out by seamlessly inverting the perspective so we can see Sook Hwe killing everyone in her wake.

The mania isn’t confined to variants of hand to hand combat. The death defying car/motorcycle chases could teach the Fast and Furious lot a thing or two with The Villainess’s inventive use of highway mayhem.

The screenplay takes many turns and digressions as it unfolds via an unusual, de-lineated narrative. Consequently, it only begins to make sense about half way through. So, hang on in there and simply marvel at the stylish, eye-popping spectacle that is The Villainess.